“After 43 days of jailbreaking frenzy [18.2 million unique devices running iOS 6 have visited Cydia], Apple has closed the cell doors again,” Andy Greenberg reports for Forbes. “The latest 6.1.3 update to iOS released Tuesday includes a patch that prevents the use of the hacking tool evasi0n, which since early February has become the most popular program ever for ‘jailbreaking’ phones and tablets to remove their software restrictions.”

“David Wang, one of the four hackers who created evasi0n, confirms that the new update includes a patch for a bug in iOS’s time zone settings, one of a series of vulnerabilities that allowed the tool to dismantle the iPhone’s and iPads’ considerable security measures. Wang first spotted the bug fix in the beta version of the update released to developers last month,” Greenberg reports. “In fact, Apple writes in notes accompanying the update that it has fixed six bugs in total, and graciously credits the hackers behind evasi0n with making them aware of four of them.”

13 Comments

Well they vulnerabilities that can compromise your iOS device so what’s the big deal. It was a bug and they fixed it. Get over it. I’m sure they’ll find a way to find another back door to jailbreak the iPhone

The deal with Jailbreaking (since I have a grandfathered AT&T unlimited data plan): being able to tether and FaceTime over 4G. Being able to Forward Voicemails via email. Advanced silence scheduling. Advanced Caller ID (useful since my cell and business phone are the same).

For some people, jailbreak also allows them to unlock their phone to use another carriers SIM card especially if one is going overseas and wants to use the local phone service instead of pay oit the wazoo to AT&T and their international phone rates. The Data plans are even worse in being charged international rates.

I JB because it adds functionality that I could probably get on Android but I’m not willing to give up the overwhelming list of other benefits of iOS for. For example, Auxo is a much better task manager than the default iOS one and allows shortcut toggles too, I can make Google Maps my default maps app (which I’ll continue to do until Apple Maps is good enough that it features the supermarket I can see from my house on it), I can permanently hide newsstand, I can handle files and email attachments much more easily with iFile (at least until there’s an iPhone version of the excellent Documents iPad app), and so on. Plus who wouldn’t want to get away from the one truly clunky, dated part of iOS – the overly busy lockscreen. I have a much nicer, more modern-looking and more functional minimalist one. I only have a handful of tweaks, but it improves my user experience hugely – pretty much the same reason everyone else I know who jailbreaks does it too. It’s nothing to do with piracy for the vast majority of users and everything to do with making the best even better. I’m hoping iOS 7 will add enough that a JB won’t be needed, but until then no 6.1.3 update for me until it has been cracked.

Here’s an idea. Since the JB Teams have come up with some pretty useful/unique ways to alter iOS (sometimes for the better), why not just hire them to assist with programming capabilities for iOS. I think it would be a match made in heaven. That would scare the crap outta Android fanatics. Could you imagine having an Apple authorized app for phone personalization?

Yes, because that wouldn’t be monumentally stupid, petty, counterproductive and pointless at all would it? What do you think would happen if you blocked millions of iOS devices from buying legitimate software and made the only options no jailbreak or use pirate repositories?

For pity’s sake, get over yourself. You give Apple fans a bad name with your drone mentality. Jailbreaking is harmless, legal, and the vast majority of users do it to add minor tweaks to make the best better or becaus they love custom looks and tinkering. I assume you don’t want all cases, skins and decals banned as well? Hey, maybe we should only be allowed to buy accessories from the Apple store, too – would that suit you better?

Absurd. You do what you want with your phone – I paid for mine though, so I get to decide what I do with it.